Shelley Lake: A Hero’s Journey

Shelley Lake, Homeland, 2012, archival ink jet on canvas, 54” x 80”. Collection of the artist.

Orlando Museum of Art

By Suzanne Cohen

As part of its program “New Work,” the Orlando Museum of Art is presenting the work of creators from Florida and other states who work with new technologies. Until the end of June the work of Shelley Lake is being presented. She is a Winter Park artist who has been one of the pioneers of digital art; her experiments with new technologies date back more than 35 years.

The works presented at the museum have been made using Photoshop and 3D. Lake uses the computer as a creative tool in order to obtain scenes that appear to be taken from a science fiction movie. Lake gains inspiration from both the aesthetics of video games and surrealism in order to offer us a look at society with its aspirations, anxieties and cultural icons. In these works, a skeleton army and armed cyborgs attack human beings in the midst of scenes of war and destruction, a kind of metaphor for our contemporary society. In other pieces, death performs a dance macabre, fornicates, enjoys and laughs among the destroyed remains of a city, a cityscape that could represent any great city in today’s world.

Through June 30, 2013